Again he declares: As for myn entent The birdes song was more convient And more pleasaunt to me by many fold Than mete or drink or any other thing. _Flower and Leaf_, 118. [2] Prologue, 9. [3] _Parlement of Foules_, 190. [4] _The Flower and the Leaf_, 34. Even if this poem be held not to have come from the pen of Chaucer, it shows that he was not alone at an early time in his enthusiasm for birds and their song. [5] _Much Ado about Nothing_, II. i. 197. [6] _3 Henry VI._ II. ii. 26. [7] _Titus Andronicus_, II. i. 93. [8] _Macbeth_, IV. ii. 34. [9] _2 Henry VI._ I. iii. 86. [10] _Hamlet_, III. iii. 67. [11] _3 Henry VI._ V. vi. 13. [12] _Lucrece_, 87. [13] _Venus and Adonis_, 601, 604. [14] _Ib._ 67. [15] _Lucrece_, 457. [16] _3 Henry VI._ IV. vi. 10. [17] _King Lear_, V. iii. 8. [18] II. i. 31. [19] IV. iii. 103. [20] II. v. 1. [21] V. iii. 17. [22] II. i. 15. [23] II. i. 22. [24] II. i. 46. The dramatist may perhaps have been thinking of this scene when he afterwards put into Hamlet’s mouth a reiteration of the same view of the indifference of the crowd: Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play, For some must watch, while some must sleep: Thus runs the world away. _Hamlet_, III. ii. 265. [25] _Venus and Adonis_, 680. [26] _Ib._ 697. [27] III. i. 80. [28] _King Lear_, IV. i. 37. [29] _Titus Andronicus_, V. i. 141. [30] _Venus and Adonis_, 316. [31] _Titus Andronicus_, III. ii. 52. [32] _2 Henry IV._ IV. iv. 91. [33] _Titus Andronicus_, II. iii. 12. [34] _Passionate Pilgrim_, xxi. [35] _Ibid._ xx. [36] _Sonnet_, lxxiii. [37] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, V. ii. 908. [38] _Titus Andronicus_, V. iii. 68. [39] _Venus and Adonis_, 431. [40] _Lucrece_, 869. [41] _Henry V._ I. i. 60. [42] _Passionate Pilgrim_, xxi. [43] _Lucrece_, 1107-1125. [44] _Phoenix and Turtle_, 9. [45] Chaucer places at the head of his large company of feathered creatures “the royal egle that with his sharpe look perceth the Sonne,” _Parlement of Foules_, 330. [46] _Richard II._ III. iii. 68. [47] _3 Henry VI._ II. i. 91. [48] IV. iii. 327. [49] IV. iii. 222. [50] _Timon of Athens_, IV. iii. 222. [51] _Coriolanus_, III. i. 136. [52] _Troilus and Cressida_, I. ii. 235. [53] _Richard III._ I. iii. 70. [54] _Ib._ I. i. 132. [55] _Henry V._ I. ii. 169.